Someone Asks What Facts Sound Comforting But Are Actually Highly Disturbing, And 30 People Deliver
Interview With Author
Facts are supposed to be educational, but if they’re entertaining or unusual, it helps them stick in our minds better. However, the truth doesn’t care about our feelings or making us feel ‘good.’ It can often be uncomfortable, and nuanced, and make us realize how fragile life can be.
The r/AskReddit online community tackled this idea by sharing facts that, on the surface, sound quite comforting. However, once you think about them a little longer, you realize how disturbing they actually are... and how little control we have over some aspects of our lives. Scroll down to see what the internet users shared.
Bored Panda reached out to the author of the viral thread, u/Soupmandog589, and they were kind enough to answer our questions. You'll find our interview with them below.
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That there is enough food and water to feed everyone on the planet for free. But a small group of world owners governs it, plays monetary games, and uses it to control the masses.
When you're sick, you're supposed to do drugs and stay out of school.
When you give birth, your body produces hormones and your brain forgets a lot of the trauma you experience so that you’ll be willing to have more children in the future. So whenever you look back on childbirth, your memory of it will likely be way less awful than it actually was.
Life can be incredibly fragile. So it’s important to take good care of your body and mind and know what to do in case of an emergency. That way, when something (inevitably) goes wrong, you’ll be tough and capable enough to handle it.
However, living in constant paranoia and fear is horrible. Yes, bad things can and do happen all the time. While you can prepare yourself for some of them, others are completely and utterly out of control to anticipate or react to. You need to be able to get on with your daily life without succumbing to chronic anxiety. And that comes down to recognizing what you can control (to a certain extent) and what you really can’t.
People think about you far less than you actually believe they do.
If you worried about what people think of you, you'd be surprised at how little they did.
The most peaceful way to die is in your sleep, but you’ll go to sleep not knowing you’ll never see anything ever again.
I was at a bbq yesterday and my uncle told me “think about it one day you went outside to play with your friends for the last time and didn’t even know it”.
Bored Panda got in touch with the author of the thread to learn more about the inspiration behind the question, as well as to get their thoughts on dealing with situations we can't control and not living in constant fear of the unknown.
According to redditor u/Soupmandog589, they thought of a fact that "seemed comforting on the outside but was actually disturbing on the inside," which prompted them to ask the r/AskReddit community for their perspectives.
However, because the OP had created the thread a while back, they can't quite remember what the initial fact that started the entire discussion was.
The author of the thread opened up to Bored Panda that they are fascinated by what other people on the internet had to say on the topic. They also shared with us how much they enjoy learning new facts.
"I’m curious, and would like to hear other people’s facts," they told us. "I just love facts."
There are hundreds if not thousands of versions of you in the minds of other people.
Depending on how many people you have met in your life.
Your really really sick, you have no energy, no appetite, and just the will to do nothing at all. Let’s say this is your grandpa in this situation. All the sudden grandpa calls you and says he wants to eat so much that it hurts and he wants to go do some fun projects, this sudden burst of energy kinda thing. Well you drive to the hospital to find that your grandpa has just died minutes after he called you. The nurse will then explain to you that this is very common when people are dying to just have a sudden burst of energy.
Happened to my dad. We came to say goobye on Wednesday, on Thursday he was full of energy and had a full meal, and FrIday he passed away peacefully at the age of 84. I miss him.
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My gran got me, my stepmum & 4 sisters to help her have a huge clear out, she just woke up one day and decided it had to be done that day. We spent 2 days going through everything in her small flat, she gave us each some trinkets and sentimental gifts and we spent the day going through old photos and listening to loads of her old stories. She died the following night. She was found cluching her wedding photo and a beautiful handwritten letter addressed to her 10 grown up kids all about how happy being a mum and grandmother had made her. The final paragraph explained how she was happy her time was finally up as she was so tired all the time and how she'd found being old incredibly boring! (She had been wild, unpredictable and full of energy most of her life, well into her 70s so being so sick, weak and frail for the last 20yrs was torture for her.) She died aged 94 with 10 kids, 40+ grandkids, 20+ great grankids and 4 great -great grandkids!
I’m not totally certain, but it’s kinda like your body just dumps every hormone possible in one final effort to stabilize itself despite the inevitable.
We call it 'packing the suitcases ' in my home country (Colombia). Just getting ready lo leave :(
My uncle had this just before he died from cancer. He had gone really quickly from being actively treated with the doctors still aiming for remission, to the cancer overtaking him and shutting down his organs. So his wife and children had only just come to terms with being told he was going to be made palliative less than 24 hours before, and suddenly he was sitting up and looking brighter and speaking to them. It was really hard for them because it made them think he might actually recover, and then they went through the process of having to accept him dying all over again when he dropped back into a stupor.
I think this death process should be made common knowledge, so that loved ones recognize what is happening. I actually learned of this recently, watching a short (like TikTok) on YouTube.
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Great something to worry about whenever I get a sudden burst of energy
It's what happens when the Spirit decides to leave the body. Continuance no longer matters, so all the controls are shut off and we get one last "Bye-bye" sense of having been alive. Then we move on.
My friends husband did this. Tried to leave the hospital while sick with pneumonia, called my friend and told her I'm being released, come and get me! She hung up with him and called the Rn desk and they said no, he is absolutely not being released. He died of a heart attack 20 minutes later
That almost sounds different. Like he knew he was going to die soon, and he wanted to be home with his loved one(s) when he passed on.
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Happened to my ex husband. He was so alert and babbling and freaking out then just collapsed from a heart attack. It was crazy to witness.
Happened to my dad, he looked the best he had in ages, went and got a hair cut we ate Chinese and that was it, he went into a coma that night.
As a hospice aide, I have seen this. Very disturbing if you don't know it's coming.
I wonder what causes this? Does the person realise this is happening? Or is it a last attempt to cling to life? :'(
Your brain flooding itself with endorphins before it dies
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My pops was almost expelled from the hospice for attempting to get one final kiss from the nurse.
This happened with my dad, too. I've heard it called 'the surge.' It was really nice, because I live in another country 1800 miles away, so we got to talk on the phone about how nice it would be for him to visit me. <3
Your brain's only task is to keep you alive and when it senses you dying, fires off everything it has.
Happened to my Nana. One day she perked up and seemed like she was doing a lot better. About a week later she died.
They often have some clarity all of a sudden if they have dementia. There is a fantastic Noni Hazelhurst film called June Again about a woman who has this.
Yes I remember my grandfather asking for an orange before dying.
My great grandpa just died 2 months ago I couldn't even say goodbye I miss him so much 😭💔
I call it their one good day. An opportunity to say goodbye and tie up loose ends.
No sun downing is a phenomenon where people with dementia get worse as the day progresses
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We asked the author of the thread for their thoughts on how people can come to terms with the fact that some things are entirely out of their control.
Redditor u/Soupmandog589 told us that self-regulation is incredibly important. "I have autism and have stuff that I can’t control but which causes major stress such as loud noises and atmospheres," they were very open and honest with Bored Panda.
"Self-regulation and listening to music usually helps for me but different things can help different people," they said.
You’re statistically more likely to die in a car crash on the way to the airport than you are in a plane crash.
You’ve never actually seen your face. Only pictures or reflections.
To put it simply, self-regulation is a person's ability to control their behavior, emotions, and thoughts, for the sake of long-term goals. Emotional self-regulation, for instance, means managing one's more disruptive emotions and impulses.
Not only that, but it also involves rebounding from the disappointments we face in life, as well as behaving in ways that are consistent with our values.
According to the OP, the secret to making the most of one's life, no matter the consequences, is committing yourself completely to your goals, whatever they might be.
Hippos and coconuts kill more people than sharks each year.
What about a hippo riding a shark 🦈 when someone throws a coconut 🥥 at you
Something that we most definitely cannot control is avoiding any and all accidents. What you can do is choose to be more attentive as a pedestrian. You can choose to drive carefully. You can follow the road rules and what to do if someone needs immediate medical help. But accidents can and do happen even if we’re doing everything right. Choosing not to travel, whether by car, plane, or any other mode of transportation, is not an option if you want to make the most of life.
You need to travel for work, to visit the people you love, and for those annual holidays somewhere far away, so you can forget what a computer even is for a couple of weeks.
‘Simple Flying’ notes that the odds of someone getting into an accident during a flight are 1 in 1.2 million. Meanwhile, the chances of this being a fatal accident are 1 in 11 million.
A study published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2020 found that flying is 6 times safer than it was 30 years ago and 22 times safer than it was 50 years ago, around the world. We’ve seen technology and safety standards improve over time.
There will be a point in time where humans go extinct. We won't experience it but imagine our future generations will see the “end of the world”.
Either alien life exists, or we are totally alone in the universe.
For the universe is Infinite the chance for alien life is Infinite too
Even if 99% of the population finds you unattractive, around 78 million people still find you attractive. Idk this just really creeps me out.
Luck. Genetics. Both of these have a role to play in what happens to us. Getting frustrated about how unlucky you’ve been is going to eat away at you. A far healthier response is to look at things from a growth-oriented perspective, where you don’t see failure as something inherently wrong. Or, to put a slightly cheesy twist on it: “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.” If you take failure or bad luck personally, it can destroy your confidence and sense of calm.
Health and fitness coach Anna Armagno Toussaint previously explained to Bored Panda the things that we can control in life.
"You can control what you put into your body. You can control your water intake and the foods you choose. You can choose to exercise or be sedentary. In most cases, there are good or bad decisions you can make. And the biggest one is that you can choose your mindset about things," she told us in an earlier interview.
If you don’t have children you end a several hundred year long bloodline.
Only if the blood line had only one child that had only one child who had only one child and so forth.
While we're losing a lot of forests in the tropics due to climate change, we're actually gaining a lot of forest in the northern latitudes, and into formerly grassland areas as more available CO2 allows them to grow in more arid regions. And everyone loves trees, right?
The problem is the climate crisis is also a biodiversity crisis, and habitat loss - like grasslands or tundra becoming forest - is arguably even harder on species than changes in weather patterns.
The idea that who we are is not who we used to be, nor who we will be. Both literally and figuratively, considering our cells are constantly dying and recycling so every 7ish years you have a "new" body and because our minds are ever expanding and learning new things.
Another one is the fact that who you are is not who others perceive you to be, since no one can ever truly know who you are and how you think, to the point that if you ever lost your memories, no one would be able to describe you fully to you.
The health coach pointed out that genetics plays such a large role in our lives, however, we cannot control it. “As someone with an autoimmune disease that I didn't choose, there are always hereditary factors that you may need to work around. Some people won't be able to make great choices. For a year I lived off mostly potatoes because that was what I could stomach. Staying positive is what got me through that," the fitness expert said that feeling jealous about other people’s advantages won’t help you.
"I absolutely wish I didn't have to have digestive issues that took years to figure out and go through the pain and trial and error medication, but I also knew it could have been worse. I stayed positive (faith helps if you're a believer because it gives you someone to turn to) and I was grateful that I was alive. Any feelings you have are real and that's ok, but don't let yourself be taken over by them,” the coach said.
You might be just like your parents when you have kids.
My husband has worked in elderly care for over 10 years. He can attest that even without dementia, older people tend to loose their ability to taste. It’s like weakening eye sight but with flavor. He’s always getting complaints that the food is too bland but it’s so full of salt substitute it’s almost inedible to everyone else.
Taste buds die, and sure, reform, but at a higher age its slower because not very important and most older people are on medications, a lot do weird things like kill taste.
According to her, if you’re ever in a tight spot, you shouldn’t be scared or too prideful to ask for help. “I struggle with this, but it is so important to talk to people and get another perspective, whether it's a therapist or loved one.”
For some more disturbing facts to shake up your day, feel free to take a peek at Bored Panda’s previous feature.
You walk by at least 10 murderers in your life time without even knowing it.
I suspect this is too simplistic and that would largely depend on which country you live - the population, how many murderers, what geographical area the murders/you live etc.
when you get skinned, you (most likely) won’t die of blood loss, but instead hypothermia or infection as they will get you first.
Everyday we get closer to death, some faster than others. Not sure if that’s creepy or if it makes me feel better.
Wouldn't we all be getting closer to death at the same rate? Sure, some are much closer than others, but we're all experiencing time one minute at a time.
You never truly know what anyone really thinks about you
Edit: I mean this like super literally. Like you never know if your spouse is planning on [hurting] you, you never know if a stranger is keeping an eye on you thinking about assaulting you. Several possibilities that you could never know.
This will be the coldest summer of the rest of your life.
There was a day when your parents picked you up for the last time, and neither one of you knew it.
I think about this concept often. And because so many things were stored somewhere, I have begun to get reacquainted with things that until recently fit this many decades ago. It's weird
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Gee, thanks, Brian. So, I'll be dead before 2024 kicks in, good to know.
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Why did I read this. My anxieties are going through the roof right now
Try this for a fact that sounds comforting but is actually highly disturbing:- Australia doesn't have a cobalt bomb or other Doomsday device.
Considering the number of species that can kill us, we have a great big bird that won a war and we are miles away from everyone, I think we are doing okay. Oh and also, we have fricken dropbears, no one messes with them.
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There was a day when your parents picked you up for the last time, and neither one of you knew it.
I think about this concept often. And because so many things were stored somewhere, I have begun to get reacquainted with things that until recently fit this many decades ago. It's weird
Load More Replies... Gee, thanks, Brian. So, I'll be dead before 2024 kicks in, good to know.
Load More Replies... Why did I read this. My anxieties are going through the roof right now
Try this for a fact that sounds comforting but is actually highly disturbing:- Australia doesn't have a cobalt bomb or other Doomsday device.
Considering the number of species that can kill us, we have a great big bird that won a war and we are miles away from everyone, I think we are doing okay. Oh and also, we have fricken dropbears, no one messes with them.
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